“I support Donald Trump. He’s speaking out on a controversial issue,” Buhl, 84, said at the Southampton Animal Shelter gala chaired by Jean Shafiroff on Saturday.

Buhl, who has been helping the homeless for decades, has a new cause — helping willing people who are living in the country illegally to go back to where they came from. He founded the Coalition to Protect American Workers & Returning Servicemen & Women four years ago when he found 80 people who were illegally in the US living in a sunflower field behind his Southampton house.

“They all wanted to go home. None were Mexicans. They were all from countries like Honduras and Guatemala,” Buhl told me.

The philanthropist chartered a bus that would take 55 passengers, and went to the Mexican consulate to arrange passage. “Mexico wouldn’t let me over the border. They said, ‘What if the bus breaks down? How are we going to feed them?’ That’s their attitude toward immigration.”

Instead, he used his own money — and contributions, mainly from unions — to send more than 400 back by plane. “It costs from $150 to $375 per person,” Buhl said.

“Some of these people were so cold and hungry, they were committing minor crimes just to go to jail, where they get three meals a day and can watch TV and play basketball,” Buhl said.

Buhl also wants to send imprisoned people who illegally immigrated to the US back to their homelands. “We have 450,000 illegals in our jails at a minimum cost of $40,000 a year,” Buhl said. “A plane ticket is a bargain.”

Buhl, who also has a big loft in Soho, had trouble getting federal 501(c)(3) certification as a charity, which allows contributors to get tax write-offs.

“It took four years to get our 501(c)(3),” Buhl said. “It’s against Obama policy.”